A common use for telephone answering machines is call screening or call monitoring. In a typical setting, the user of a telephone answering machine may set the answering machine so that the user may listen to incoming messages as they are being recorded on the answering machine. If the user recognizes the voice of the calling party and would like to speak with the calling party, the user may answer the call. On the other hand, if the user does not recognize the calling party, or if the user otherwise does not want to take the call, the user simply may allow the calling party to finish recording the message. This call screening or call monitoring ability is particularly useful to avoid unwanted telephone solicitations.
Many modern telephone systems include network-based voice mail systems to which incoming calls are routed when the voice mail system user's telephone is busy or is not answered. In such systems incoming callers are routed directly to the voice mail system if the user's telephone is busy or is unanswered. That is, the call is not routed through the user's telephone where he or she may listen to the voice mail message being recorded by the calling party in order to screen or monitor the call. The user must simply wait until the message has been recorded by the calling party and then call into the voice mail system to retrieve the message. Moreover, if the user is away from the user's telephone at a remote location, the user has no way of knowing that a message has been left for the user other than to call into the voice mail system from time to time to check for voice mail messages.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.